Making former Urban Development Authority chairman Kanchi Rama Rao current Chairman of A.P. Markfed for the first half of the five-year term has to some extent doused the fire of anger among presents of Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) and District Cooperative Marketing Societies (DCMS) in Krishna District.
The PACS and DCMS chiefs of the district were shocked when the APCOB chairman post was denied to former Minister Pinnamaneni Venkateswara Rao.
The president of the Krishna District Cooperative Central Bank, which has the largest number of PACS, is the traditional candidate for the APCOB chairman post. The ruling Congress party, however, gave the post to two DCCB presidents from Telangana region on a rotation basis. Seemandhra leaders, expressing their ire at that time, said that the decision to give APCOB to Telangana should be balanced by making Mr Rama Rao of Krishna district chairman of MARKFED for the entire five year term.
This did not happen with Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy giving the second half of the term to his follower K.V. Satyanarayana Reddy. The candidate supported by PCC president Botcha Satyanarayana, K.Suryanarayana Raju, was set aside at the last moment to make place for Mr Rama Rao. Minister for Secondary Education Kolusu Parthasarathy is reported to have supported the candidature of Mr Rama Rao. Followers of Mr Rama Rao are ecstatic because their leader has been given a Cabinet rank post after loyally serving the party for nearly four decades. Mr Rama Rao is the only non-Scheduled Caste leader, from Tiruvuru Assembly constituency which is reserved for SCs, who was conferred a Cabinet rank post in several decades. The fact the Congress party is wooing the Kapu community in a big way in coastal Andhra is established without doubt in the selection of candidates to the Markfed chairman post.
